Under My Skin

“I asked if she took you off the pills.”

“She lowered the dosage.”

“And.”

“My dreams.” My dream images of Jack from last night mingle with the shadow on the subway, the odd daydream I experienced on the train. “They’re more vivid. I don’t feel as rested.”

“Tell her to put the dose back up,” she says sharply. “You need your rest, Poppy.”

“I want to get off them.” The words sound weak even to my own ears. Do I really? “I don’t want to take pills to sleep for the rest of my life.”

“Why not? Better living through chemistry. Lots of people are medicated all their lives.” She lifts her glass like she’s proving a point.

I don’t know if she’s kidding or not. What’s certain is that I’m duller, mentally heavier. I haven’t had a camera in my hand since Jack died, haven’t taken one serious photograph. The truth is I don’t even feel the urge. Is it the grief? The drugs? Some combination of those things. I put the glass down on the table, where it glitters accusingly. How many have I had? Is it weird that I don’t even know?

She drops it. We chat awhile longer, just gossip about the firm, how I think Maura and Alvaro might be involved. I think I see something cross Layla’s face at the mention of Alvaro’s name, but then it’s gone. She tells me that she’s started shooting again. Layla has an eye for faces. They blossom before her lens, reveal all their secrets. Her favorite subjects in recent years, naturally, have been her children. She still maintains her website, has an Instagram feed with a decent following. She has real talent, more than I ever had.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Not more beautiful shots of my gorgeous children. After Slade and Izzy go to school, I head out the way I used to. Just looking for it, you know, that perfect moment.”

“Show me,” I say, curious.

“I will.” She looks away. It’s not like her to be shy. “I’m rusty. I’ve spent so many years on the kids—maybe I’ve lost my eye. What small amount of talent I had, maybe it just withered up and died.”

“I doubt that,” I answer. “Be patient. Maybe you just have a new way of seeing things now.”

She shifts on the couch, folds her legs under her. Something about the way she’s sitting seems uncomfortable, as if she might be in pain. Too much kickboxing. She rubs at her shoulder again. “Life does that I guess.”

She looks at me too long, too sadly. I look away.

“I should get home.” This happens. I’m okay where I am and then suddenly I just need to be alone, like I can’t hold the pieces of myself together anymore.

“Stay here,” she offers. But I’ve spent too many nights in their guest room. Tonight, I need to think. Layla’s life is a cocoon. When I’m here, everything else disappears—the real world seems fuzzy and insubstantial.

I get up, and grab my stuff, get moving before she can talk me into it. She watches me a beat, seems like she wants to say something. But then she rises, too, and doesn’t stop me.

“Wait a second,” she says, then rushes off down the hallway. She’s back in a moment, as I’m pulling on my coat.

“Take these,” she says, pressing a bottle of pills in my hand. “They’re mine. I think that’s the dosage you were on originally.”

I look at the bottle. “Don’t you need them?”

“I can get more.”

“How?” I ask. “Dr. Nash watches me like a junkie.”

Layla smiles. “I have my ways.”

I shouldn’t take them. I should hand them back to her and ask her what the hell she’s talking about. Where is she getting all these pills? And why? But I don’t. I just gratefully shove them in my pocket, promising myself that I won’t take them. Unless. Unless I absolutely need to.

“Sure you don’t want to talk about it?” she asks. “Whatever is going on? I’m here when you’re not okay. Always. Don’t forget that.”

It’s tempting, to come back inside and tell Layla, let her take over in that way she always has. This is what we need to do...

“I’m okay,” I say instead.

4 (#u45bdf40c-25ae-5944-ab4b-583b931df908)

The Lincoln Town Car waits for me in the motor court. When he spies me, Layla’s towering, refrigerator-sized driver, Carmelo, climbs out quickly and rushes to reach the door before I do, smiles victoriously as he swings it open. He has long blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, faded denim eyes and a jaw like the side of a mountain.

“I got there first, Miss Poppy,” he says.

“This time,” I concede, slipping into the buttery leather interior, and he closes the door.

It’s a thing we have; how I find it ridiculous to wait by the door while he comes around to open it. And he considers door-opening a critical feature of his job, and a terrible dereliction of duty if I open it and get in before he sees me. He’s the rare person who cares about the minute details of his profession. I shouldn’t mess with him. But he’s sweet and funny and we enjoy our little game.

“Home?” he asks.

“Home,” I say, even though I don’t have a home. I have a place where I live, but not a home.

The city rushes past—lights and people, limos, beaters, taxis, bicyclists. I am light, the wine, the pills—I let my head rest against the seat, which seems to embrace me. The hooded man is a distant memory. The car is quiet, except for low jazz coming from the radio; I let my eyes close. Sometimes Carmelo and I chat about his aging mother, his young son, Leo. But he rarely speaks unless I talk to him first, unless he has a question. It’s another standard of his job, to disappear, to be only what you need him to be. When I open my eyes, I catch his in the rearview mirror, watching.

“Long day?” he asks.

“Yes,” I admit. “You?”

“The usual,” he says with a shrug. He takes the kids to school, Mac to work, shuttles Layla through her busy day, waits for Mac in the evenings, takes clients (and friends) around; his day ends when Mac’s does, often not until after midnight or later. Carmelo was always the driver for boys’ night out, when Jack, Alvaro and Mac got together. Shuttling them from bar to bar, maybe to some private card game at Mac’s club, who knows where else.

What could Carmelo tell us about our husbands? Layla mused.

Are you kidding? I’d quip. He’d never tell us anything.

“The city, though, lately. What a mess.”

“Ever think about getting out?”

“Nah,” he says. “Born and raised, you know.”

He pulls to the curb and I just stare for a second, my heart pulsing.

“Carmelo.”

He turns to look at me questioningly, then out at the street. His eyes widen as it dawns.

“Oh, no,” he says, then covers his mouth in a girlish gesture of embarrassment. “Miss Poppy. I’m so sorry.”

He’s taken me to my old apartment building, the one on the Upper West Side where I lived with Jack, not far from Layla’s. A couple I don’t recognize climbs the stairs, laughing, carrying sacks of groceries. She’s petite and wearing jeans, a light black jacket. He’s taller, broad, with an inky mop of hair—young, stylish. It could be us. It was us.

“It’s okay,” I say, biting back a brutal rush of grief, of anger—not at him, at everything.